From Arms Control to Denuclearization: Governmentality and the Abolitionist Desire

Mutimer, David

doi:10.1080/13523260.2011.556844

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…By unpacking the tight association between neorealism and deterrence theory, this article contributes to the growing critical debate about nuclear issues. (Biswas 2014;Burke 2009;Craig and Ruzicka 2013;Mutimer 2011).…”

Section: American School Ir and The Disciplinary Politics Of Nuclear mentioning

confidence: 98%

Power, violence, and nuclear weapons

Harrington

2016

Critical Studies on Security

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This article contributes to an ongoing debate about the role of the thermonuclear revolution in realist thought and the viability of nuclear disarmament. Drawing on the work of Hannah Arendt, it develops an immanent critique of balance-of-power theories of international politics. Immanent critique is a diagnostic process. It takes a thought system on its own terms and by revealing its contradictions from within, opens up new possibilities for transformation. This critique reveals how the ontological assumptions Kenneth Waltz makes about the nature of power allowed him, in the guise of an apolitical theory, to transform the violence of nuclear weapons from a threat to humanity into a source of security, and therefore a normative good. According to the logic of this argument, thinking past the limits of this thought system will necessarily need to include questioning and otherwise disrupting the tight association between violence and power.

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Section: American School Ir and The Disciplinary Politics Of Nuclear mentioning

confidence: 98%

Power, violence, and nuclear weapons

Harrington

2016

Critical Studies on Security

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“…Second, in most if not all the nine states that possess nuclear weapons today, nuclear arms are firmly embedded in ideational structures (Walker, 2020). And while complete disarmament would likely require the dismantlement or rewiring of the relevant narratives and discourses, stockpile reductions can usually be undertaken without significantly brushing up against the tropes and beliefs in which the practice of nuclear deterrence is couched (Mutimer, 2011;Ritchie, 2013). This is not to say that advocates of arms control do not face intellectual or "ideological" resistance, but rather that arguments for arms control can be made without challenging the main tenets of strategic orthodoxy.…”

Section: Nuclear Stockpile Reductions and Limitations On Deploymentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As it happened, his administration's Nuclear Posture Review did not present New START as a break with nuclear deterrence theory or the supposed necessity of nuclear weapons, but instead as a means of bolstering deterrence, insisting that "any future nuclear reductions must continue to strengthen deterrence of potential regional adversaries" (U.S. Department of Defense, 2010, p. xi). In the words of Mutimer (2011), the fundamental assumptions underpinning arms control produce a practice that is "not only content to see nuclear weapons remain, but which actively requires them" (p. 68).…”

Section: Nuclear Stockpile Reductions and Limitations On Deploymentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A theory of nuclear disarmament: Cases, analogies, and the role of the non-proliferation regime

Egeland

2021

Contemporary Security Policy

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What might prompt a nuclear-armed state to give up its arsenal? Nuclear disarmament has provided a nominally shared goal for virtually all the world's states for decades, yet surprisingly little effort has been devoted to systematically theorizing its drivers. This article aims to begin filling this void. I proceed in three steps. First, I discuss the conceptual, material, and ideational features of renunciation to arrive at a rudimentary understanding of what, fundamentally, nuclear disarmament as a political process involves. Second, I scope out the empirical evidence on which a general theory of nuclear renunciation might be based. Third, synthesizing the dominant explanations for the cases discussed in the second part, I outline a basic account of nuclear relinquishment and discuss the compatibility of this account with common assumptions about disarmament practice. I conclude that the best evidence available suggests that adversarial politics and stigmatization are necessary conditions for renunciation. KEYWORDS Nuclear disarmament; theory; case studies; analogies; norms; adversarial politics Nuclear disarmament is one of the United Nations' oldest aspirations. The goal of abolition commands large popular support across continents (Baron et al., 2020;Egeland & Pelopidas, 2021; International Committee of the Red Cross, 2020; Kafura, 2020), and has for half a century constituted a legally binding obligation under the near universally approved Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Yet we know relatively little about the drivers of nuclear relinquishment, and there is no consensus about how the elimination of nuclear arms might be accomplished in practice. In one scholar's estimation, "[t]he political dynamics of nuclear disarmament are under-studied and under-theorised" (Burford, 2016, p. 1). In the words of another: "There is no theory of nuclear disarmament"

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“…This contradiction is not an incidental or merely practical one but in fact illuminates the difficulty of asserting any straightforward meaning for something that has become so intertwined with our understandings of ourselves and the modern world as nuclear weapons have, as well as the complexities of locating that meaning within the history of nuclear exceptionalism. For, while the logic of prohibition concentrates on the weapon itself, nuclear exceptionalism can also be understood as residing as much outside the object of the weapon as in it, in wider structures of power, inequality and insecurity (Biswas 2014;Hecht 2014;2007), in histories of Cold War excess and the institutionalisation of its security practices (Mutimer 2011) and in the relationships of nuclear colonialism (Endres 2009), in which these weapons have been developed and sustained. This in itself raises the question of if, as we are asked to accept by the logic of prohibition, the meaning of nuclear weapons is socially constructed, can we change the meaning of nuclear weapons without changing society?…”

Section: Laura Considine University Of Leedsmentioning

confidence: 99%